Depends on what you run. I run several apps at once that suck ram like it's mothers milk.

PS3 takes over 3 Gigs by itself.. and when I upgrade to 5 it will take even more. I open lots of files at once...30-50 MB files and for every file you open..PS needs 2.5 times that in ram.Then I need Quark open.. Adobe Acrobat, C1 version 6.0 and Safari and ...blah blah. I'm tired of quitting apps...OSX handles ram better these days... but you can never have enuff ram.Besides...16 GBs of ram for a paltry $208 bucks. I'm on it.All I know is looking at my MBP with 4 gigs of ram.. I was experiencing heavy page outs... which results in lags in the softwares. I don't need clients sitting next to me watching the beachball.Previously I used the iMacs at the printing company I worked for 10 years. But i have been on my own for a year and now need to step up at the studio. Home is ok with a MP and 6 GBs.. although I'm thinking about some more ram that too.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

Well this has been an excellent thread! I am in the same boat at home and use my 3 year old MBP to do everything. I need to replace my old dual 2 GHz G5 in my home studio and I was having the same dilemma...new or refurb and max out the RAM. I think I will go with the refurb deal too. I have a MacPro tower at work with 16 GB RAM and between PS and video editing and whatever else more RAM is always the way to go.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

So you should have saved some time and called Reboot first since you aren't going to listen to me.

I still think you should go new. Thunderbolt won't "mature" any on the iMac,at least not for a long while, but new periphials will be coming out. In the meantime, you will be stuck with last years model with no chance of using thunderbolt at all...until you upgrade again.

New ones are only $400 more. Considering that you would/could use this one a LOT longer than the previous model because of TB....just saying.

That 27" one is out of stock...did you get the last one?

And wait, isn't that refurb one a single processor? I don't see any mention of duo/dual/etc on there.

The iMac "Core i3" 3.2 27-Inch Aluminum (Mid-2010) is powered by a dual core 3.2 GHz Intel "Core i3" I3-550 (Clarkdale) processor with a dedicated 256k level 2 cache for each core and a 4 MB shared level 3 cache. In lieu of a system bus, it has a "Direct Media Interface" (DMI) that "connects between the processor and chipset" at 2.5 GT/s.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

John.. I hear you about TB. But consider this... what data, or amount of data, do I need to move at those speeds? USB 2.0/ FW800 are fast enough for me.Today my shoot resulted in 3.45 GBs of data.That took 2 minutes to transfer to a back up drive. TB would have made it be about a tenth of that.. but I'm ok with it taking 2 minutes.. I'll do something else while waiting. After careful consideration... I have come to the conclusion that TB is not yet ready for prime time (in my world). When FW800 came out I didn't need it ASAP.. and actually seldom use it now at full 800 speeds.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

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